jack,  writers,  writing life

And I’m Done

What’s Jack up to? Jack is doing well. He’s up and at ‘em and ready for a relaxing week after having a long and wild weekend with the family. At least I hope so. I know I’m ready for a fairly relaxing week so I hope Jack is on board with that.

Well, it’s November 30th the last day for NaNoWrimo 50,000 word challenge and I’m happy to report that I’ve completed it with 54,194 words. I went a little over since I started with a few words in this story. This was my first Nano and it was one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences of my writing life.

Speaking of hardest I had one crazy day on Friday in my post Thanksgiving stupor where I wrote 10,000 words. I would not recommend this for anyone. I think I was sleep writing at one point and had to get up and hop around the house a bit. Splash some water on my face.
In my head I was Rocky and had a little Burgess Meredith pushing me on. Making sure I wouldn’t give up and there were plenty of times I wanted to. At 20,000 and again at 27,000 and again at 35,000 words. But once I got close to 40 I knew there was no turning back.

A life saver, well, NaNo saver for me was Write or Die over at Dr. Wicked’s writing lab. It really forced me to write without thinking and let go of that inner critic. At one point when I was complaining about how hard it was to think up something else to write my son gave me a great reminder when he said, “You don’t write what you think Mom, you write what you feel.” Such wise words.

Now I know that this story will take about 20- 25,000 more words to finish and at least 10,000 of the hot mess I’m-so-tired words will be cut, but hey, I’ll be crossing that bridge next month and maybe even next year. Yeah, probably into next year.

Well, that’s it for me and my NaNo journey. I want to thank all of you for your encouraging words. They meant so much and to my RWA/NYC NaNo crew a big thanks too. I’m so glad I joined you for the ride. Oh and all my NaNo tweeting buddies. You rock hard!
Now onto that layer of dust that had been sitting for the past month.
Best,
Kwana